The Insider Secrets of the 5 types of psoriatic arthritis
Psoriatic arthritis is a joint disease that occurs in approximately 10% of patients with skin psoriasis. In some cases, arthritis appears earlier and skin lesions develop over time, and in others, skin involvement does not occur despite suffering from joint disease. According to data from a study of prevalence of rheumatic diseases, the prevalence of this disease is 0.58%.
Symptom
The joint injury is inflammatory, that is, it presents with pain, swelling, heat, difficulty of movement of the inflamed joint and with time the possibility of deformation.
It is a chronic disease that evolves irregularly throughout life, alternating periods of inactivity and others of inflammation and pain. Psoriatic arthritis starts slowly and the way it manifests is different for each individual, but experts have established five ways to appear, although some of them may overlap in some patients:
Symmetrical: it is the one that occurs equally in the symmetrical joints of our body, that is, it occurs in the same joints on both sides of the body: the knees, elbows or ankles. It is usually the most frequent type.
Oligoarticular: it affects in a milder way and, in this case, the joints asymmetrically (it could affect your right elbow and left knee, for example).
Interphalangeal distal: appears in distal joints, that is, those closest to the extremities, such as the fingers or toes.
Spondylitis: Affects the spine, from the neck to the lower back.
Arthritis mutilans - affects the small joints of the hands and feet, and is the rarest and most severe form of the disease.
Sometimes psoriatic arthritis can affect other parts of the body other than the joints, such as the eye or bone. In the latter, the lesions appear mainly in the insertion of the tendons and ligaments. Inflammation of the Achilles tendon insertion into the calcaneus (heel) bone is common.
The severity of arthritis is unrelated to the extent of the skin lesion.The main dermal symptom of this pathology is the appearance of well-defined reddened skin plates, covered with whitish scales and which are frequently distributed bilaterally, affecting areas of friction such as elbows or knees. Joint symptoms are common to any type of arthritis (pain, heat, redness, inability to mobilize the joint, and sometimes deformation of the joint). However, there are three things that differentiate it from the rest of arthritis: joint involvement tends to be asymmetric, that is, if one knee is affected, it is not customary to be injured, simultaneously the other knee; injures the distal interphalangeal joints (those next to the nails); produces joint inflammation of the joints and tendons of the fingers,
Treatments for psoriatic arthritis
The goal of treatment for psoriatic arthritis is to reduce joint pain and inflammation, control skin psoriasis, and delay or prevent joint damage. The treatment varies in each patient depending on the intensity and extent of the inflamed joints and also on the severity of the skin lesions or the appearance of other manifestations caused by the disease.
